Donald Trump Cites His Own ‘Very High Level Of Intelligence’ For Denial Of Climate Change, ‘I Don’t See It’

Donald Trump has explained why he does not believe the conclusions of climate scientists in a 'Washington Post' interview.

Donald Trump has explained why he does not believe the conclusions of climate scientists in a 'Washington Post' interview.

Donald Trump has repeatedly confused the definitions of “weather” and “climate,” as the Independent has noted, but in a wide-ranging interview with the Washington Post newspaper published on Tuesday, Trump made what the paper described as “Trump’s most extensive yet on why he disagrees with the dire National Climate Assessment released by his own administration Friday, which found that climate change poses a severe threat to the health and financial security of Americans, as well as to the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.”

In the Washington Post interview, Trump cited his own “very high level of intelligence” for his denial that climate change is real, or if it is, that it is the result of human actions.

“One of the problems that a lot of people like myself, we have very high levels of intelligence but we’re not necessarily such believers,” Trump told the paper. “You look at our air and our water, and it’s right now at a record clean.”

But critics have noted that despite his self-proclaimed “very high level of intelligence,” Trump has often appeared ignorant of the difference between “weather” and “climate.” The Independent newspaper reported that in a recent Twitter message, Trump asked with some sarcasm, “Whatever happened to Global Warming?” after noting, “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS.”

At what “level of intelligence” does one begin to understand the distinction between weather and climate? Asking for a president. https://t.co/oIKuOsvEIL

But the Twitter posting last week was far from the first time that Trump has denied the existence of global warming, apparently due to an inability to distinguish between “climate,” which is “is the average daily weather for an extended period of time at a certain location, ” according to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and “weather” which the NOAA defines as “short-term conditions of the atmosphere.”

“Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get,” the NOAA explains on its site. “Weather is what you see outside on any particular day. So, for example, it may be 75 degrees and sunny or it could be 20 degrees with heavy snow. That’s the weather. Climate is the average of that weather….When we are talking about climate change, we are talking about changes in long-term averages of daily weather.”

But way back in a 2014 Twitter post, as the Inquisitr reported, Trump dismissed the entire concept of global warming as “bulls***,” because, “our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”

In a 2012 Twitter post, Trump went a step further, claiming that the “concept of global warming” was a Chinese hoax designed to “make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”

Data collected by NASA climate scientists show a rapid climb in average global temperatures over the past three decades, and “Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree*: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.”

But in his Washington Post interview, Trump was not persuaded. “As to whether or not it’s man-made and whether or not the effects that you’re talking about are there, I don’t see it,” he said in the interview.